DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY-BASED LEARNING APPROACH - PARTNERSHIP EDUCATION: ACTION RESEARCH & LEARNING SCENARIOS (PEARLS)

Dr Peter DaySchool of Art, Design & Media

Intro slide

Doug’s Questions

1. How is your work related to collective intelligence?

2. How is your work related to the common good?3. How is your work related to strengthening this

nascent community / network? (content, communication, structure, etc.)

What is the purpose? Consumers or citizens?

Who decides? How?

Collective Intelligence & the Common Good

The Common Good

Citizenship, collective action, and active participation

The notion of the common good …asserts that...people can and should live their lives as citizens deeply embedded in social relationships.

1. "Collective" refers to any entity constituted by other entities. In this case, it usually refers to human social entities such as groups, organizations and communities.

2. Intelligence is variously defined as "the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge," "the ability to effectively adapt," or simply "the ability to solve problems."

3. Intelligence can also be defined as strategically useful information

4. http://www.co-intelligence.org/CollectiveIntelligence1.html

5. Observation from the earlier sessions:

1. Conceptually, the common good & collective intelligence should not mean the standardisation of sameness - homogenous

2. In my opinion design for the common good should not seek to measure, calculate or predict human behaviour – we are culturally diverse & heterogeneous

3. Societies/communities are contested spaces

Community Media 4 Kenya

Partnership of marginalised communities, NGOs, INGOs, Kenyan Universities & UoB Media Studies students

Community media = tools, spaces and processes to empower local voices; support opportunities for socio-economic

development; promote diversity and mutual cultural

understanding between students and communities (inter & intra)

Tribal differences – 2007/8 pre & post electoral violence

Community Media 4 Kenya – evolving partnership network

4th year- started as an experiment in community-based learning (LM376 Community Project) Totally self-financing

Students pay their own air fares and raise funds for equipment & training

Partner communities provide hospitality when in field

Student goal - skills, knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm makes a difference as they learn

Students and community - focus of mutual knowledge sharing and learning environments

CMR4K Vision – A participatory & empowered citizenship engaging with

ICT

Training the trainers based model Citizens appropriate digital technologies to

assist in taking responsibility for the decisions that shape their daily lives.

PEARLS: a multi-level community based learning approach

Partnership Education: Action Research & Learning Scenarios

Partners – marginalised communities

Youth groups & NGOs

Activities Year 1 – community reporting & blogging

In Kibugat village in Kericho

Year 2 – Voices 4 Peace video productionknowledge sharing…..capacity building empowering diverse voices (FYI; Faces of Peace/Model ITU & International Youth Council in Kenya)

70+ youth from 5 different tribes – Kipsigis (Kalenjin); Luo; Kikuyu; Meru & Kisii

Activities

• Year 3 – Video production & Blogging workshops in

Nairobi• 3 UoB students facilitated 20+ participants

– University College Rongo (Moi)– Dean, Senior Lecturer + students– IYC (Kenya)– Accord– Oasis Peace Organisation– K Youth Media

– Focus Youth Initiative & Kingsway Preparatory School

January’s fieldwork partnership

• Stories from our cities – Photography training & exhibition

• Rongo University College – Information Centres• 2 day video production workshop on

campus• Training the trainers

– Fieldwork video production – FGM & Poverty & exploitation in nearby gold-mining village

– Youth empowerment – Nyandiwa

Future plans• CM4K as a student driven Community

Interest Company?• New module Social Action & Community

Media • Kingsway (Londiani) electricity from

grid and then into school + dorms• Ruiru Day Orphanage (FYI)

• Continue to develop partnerships with IYC Kenya

• Community Media Centres network• Raspberry Pi using solar

power• Collaborative documentaries• SEMA Youth Film Festival• Community media as an agent of

social change & empowerment• Rather than the passive digital

consumer of current policies

Community-based Learning

Considering the impact of introducing academic partners into the community learning networks as equal learning partners

Learning by doing ‘with’ rather than ‘to’ or ‘for’

Knowledge sharing through dialogue and reciprocal actions

Learning as a process of mutual inquiry & discovery

Enrich student learning Strengthening and empowering

communities

Community Learning

Interactions between human social entities

Problem solving

Information & Knowledge sharing

Common good?

Participation as citizens Voice & empowerment

Information/Knowledge exchange Conversational communications Learning by doing – experiential

action Dialogue - communications Networking

Transactional exchanges, e.g. social capital - trust

Contribution to emergent community network of learning

Collective intelligence for common good Who decides the agenda?

Purpose The consumerist model of the Network Society

or democratic engagement and active participation of citizens?

The PEARLS approach of CM4K seeks to encourage full participation of community citizens with academic students in learning partnerships for the common good.

Our contribution to the network.